The Hospital Scene
by sweet-sue-sparrow
Summary: (Set after 7.17) The present: Sam watches his brother mourn over an empty hospital bed. The future: Dean will learn to face a future without Castiel. The past: Castiel heard Dean's prayers.


**AN**: So this time my author's note is at the beginning because I am going to tell you why I wrote this and I think it might need a disclaimer. This is weird. I know. I went to writing camp earlier this summer and since I came back I haven't really challenged myself writing-wise. I haven't worked on my novel (until this week) I haven't worked on any of my original stories. Hence this explosion of experimental fiction. I know it's weird and sad and bleak, but this is me trying to challenge myself. As always, I CRAVE feedback.

**I**

It's the hospital scene. It isn't new; Sam has seen it too many times, with his father, with Dean. It is a scene in stained glass. The bed, an alter, beneath a white sheet-shroud. It is bathed in the light of the window, a light so cold and void of color that it reminds one that morning and mourning were homophonic. The sterility of the scene is damaged slightly by the marks on the walls. Wings. The hospital staff say they'll paint over them.

And then there's Dean, slumped in the chair beside the bed; the chair for visitors, if there was anyone still there to visit. His shoulders are slumped, his hands folded beneath his drooping head, as if he's in prayer. The urgency that had possessed the older Winchester brother since he got the phone call has left him.

The room that they moved Cas to is not like the one the Winchesters left him in. There are no bars on the windows, the door is not locked. This is a room for some one who isn't going anywhere. _Wasn't_ Sam corrects himself, _wasn't_ going anywhere.

Sam stands by the door, arms crossed. It isn't that he doesn't grieve. No, the grief is like a cancer. The slow kind. It creeps in, unannounced, hungry. It permeates the organs and poisons them. It doesn't hurt until later. Right now, Sam is standing back because he can't come closer. The room feels like a confessional, like he shouldn't be here at all.

He'll never admit it, but he's seen Dean praying. Even when they didn't know if Cas was alive or dead, even when he'd betrayed them, every night when Dean thought his brother was asleep, he would take a moment and bend his head and pray.

Sam will take the secret to his grave, but he sees that Dean is praying now. Sam doesn't need to be told that his brother is praying for Cas to come back, Sam would pray too, if Cas had ever answered his prayers. He doesn't know where angels go when they die, but he is pretty sure they didn't answer prayers. Wherever Cas is, he's beyond hearing, even Dean's words.

Sam wishes the wind would blow. The window is open but no breath comes in to stir the thin white curtains. If only a gust would swoop in and disturb the scene. It was like a diorama cast in marble. The air is stagnant with grief.

Sam takes in this hospital room. The linoleum floor, the white washed walls, the _wings_. Those damned wings, without them he could pretend this was just like all the others. But those wings. Sam ought to have had his fill of the impure. He ought to be desensitized by this point. But he isn't. The wings are wrong, are disgusting. Yet still, Sam can't tear his eyes away from them.

**II**

In five minutes Dean will give up on praying. He still won't know why he's as messed up as he is. He won't know what makes this death so special. Not yet. Outside an attendant in a polka-dot smock will offer to show them downstairs. She will seem so out of place with her flush and her polka-dots; Dean won't know if he wants to laugh or to punch her. Either way, the two Winchesters will follow her.

The morgue is another sterile white room. Dean will shiver when he comes in. They will say they are the next of kin. _What's the name?_ The attendant will ask, _we never got a name_. Winchester. Dean will tell them. _Winchester_.

Dean will look at the face of his old friend. He'll hate himself for looking a moment later. He'll hate how vulnerable he looks, how pale. Lines that seemed straight and firm will seem suddenly weak. Dean had seen Cas die before but this will be the first time he sees him dead. Worse than the sorry appearance, Dean will hate the urge he feels to push the messy hair back from the forehead, to breathe life back into the empty lungs.

Sam will do the talking. They'll claim the body. Sam will suggest a hunter's funeral. Dean will cringe at the idea of flames licking at the perfect form, blackening pallid skin. He'll insist on burying Cas. Sam will relent.

At first, Dean will cope with Cas's death like he copes with everything else, by drinking. He'll drink and he'll fuck and at the end of the day he will still feel empty. He'll stagger back to motel after motel, lay in his bed, facing away from Sammy so that his younger brother won't see how he will lie awake, eyes open, trying not to slip into dreams or into prayer.

He won't know why he doesn't feel better after a month, though the dink will tempt in strange thoughts that he'll banish as soon as they come.

A week after that, Sam will tell him to suck it up. The Leviathans won't have stopped their plans just because Cas is dead. Sam is right. The Winchesters will hunt down Dick Roman. They will succeed in killing him. Well, Meg will. Out of some sense of obligation over Cas's death, or some deep rooted hatred of Leviathans, it's her who will stab him through the neck. It's her who will disappear. The Winchesters will not search for her.

After two months, Dean will have calluses on his soul. He doesn't feel anything but a dull aching where his grief used to be. He will drink a little more and sleep a little less. Soon he'll even stop dreaming about him. Mostly. And the only times, in the waking hours, that memory creeps in, will be those when a demon shouts it out in an attempt to phase him. _Remember Castiel? Poor dead Castiel, who you LET die? Remember him?_ And it will phase Dean for a moment. Then he will fight back, harder, angrier than before.

After a year, Dean will be back to his old self. Maybe a little quieter, maybe a little harsher in his tone. Sam will stop trying to fix him after a while. Dean will figure it makes him a better hunter. There are still tablets to track down, demons to hunt. Life will go on. It always does.

**III**

Castiel's world was a void. He did not know what day it was or if it was day at all, or if it was night. He did not know if the walls, the ceiling, the bed, were still there. He had long ago stopped hearing Lucifer's voice. The only real thing in that void was a whispered word. _Please, please, please_. Dean's voice, gruff and broken. It was at once sweet and sad. He knew it was the closest he would get to seeing Dean before he died. That was the last thing Castiel heard. Dean's praying.

For a long time before he died, Castiel floated in the void. He could hear sounds in the room around him. He heard the nurse -Meg- make the phone call. She never actually said the word _dying_. She said something about days, or maybe it was hours. Surely, Castiel thought, Dean would come to say goodbye. After all his praying, after all Castiel had done for him, it was only right. He waited for Dean. He wanted to hear Dean's voice, his actual spoken voice. He wanted Dean to lend him a little feeling, to hold his hand when they pulled the plug.

He heard Meg stalling for time, saying the family would be there soon. _The family_. He wondered why he hadn't noticed when they switched from using pronouns- _he, his, him_, to _the_. Check _the pulse_, have you heard from _the family_. How soon until he was altogether inanimate?

Castiel was overcome by anxiety. He had a right to be, anyone would worry at the prospect of dying. But it was worse for Castiel. He did not know where angels went when they died. God knows, he'd sent enough to whatever that plane was, but he had never given it much thought. He supposed angels couldn't go to heaven. That wouldn't make sense. No, not purgatory, and surely, even if, like him, they deserved to, they did not go to hell. Was there nothingness? But he had nothingness already. What then? No. He wanted to be brave in the face of death, like Dean.

Dean did not come. It might have been days, or hours. Time was not a concept that existed in the void. Castiel listened to him pray. _Please, please, please_. _Please don't die, you can't die_. He could die. He would die. The doctor said that it was time. That they were out of time. Despite Meg's pleas, they said they could not wait.

He wondered if it would hurt. Then there was a moment when he felt like drowning. Castiel's life slipped out of him, not with a bang but a whimper. But before the darkness swallowed him he caught a voice, a breath.

_Cas-_

Dean was praying, and it felt like heaven.


End file.
